Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 168: Foundation Beyond Belief

Episode Date: August 4, 2014

  Special thanks to Dale McGowan, Executive Director of Foundation Beyond Belief for joining us.    

Want to stream Cognitive Dissonance to your Android or iPhone? Buy the app! Go to DissonancePod.com and click on the link on the right-hand side of the page. Each purchase helps support the show. Hey, Cecil and Tom, this is John in California again. Just listening to the news story about the study they did with religious children believing far-fetched things easier than secular children I was thinking that setting up an experiment like this would be unethical we're just unlucky enough that people

tell their children about hell and those kind of things so that the experiment can be ruined but if you had to set it, no one would allow you to do it. So, yeah, Glory Borealis, rock on. Hey, guys, Glory here. When I first started listening to the show, I kind of thought of it like a light, get-updated kind of thing. It was like a strawberry daiquiri, you know, or some drink with like

fruity stuff and umbrellas and whatnot. You know, it's something fun, but I'm not going to have it all the time. And then like the more I listen to it, the more I'm like, you know, I'm like really looking forward to the next show. Kind of down on it. So anyway, it's more like an acquired taste

and over time like a good single malt. Gosh, you guys fucking rock. And I realize I might be an alcoholic. Thanks. Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended. The explicit tag is there for a reason. Recording from Glory Hole Studios in Chicago, this is Cognitive Distance.

Every episode we blast anyone who gets in our way. We bring critical thinking, skepticism, and irreverence to any topic that makes the news, makes it big, or makes us mad. It's skeptical. It's political. And there is no welcome at. This is episode 168. And Cecil, I would like to point out that since I have been doing the notes, I have gotten the episode number right every time. It's amazing what you can do when you put your fucking mind to it.

You know, it's amazing what you can do when you actually do a little bit of the work. When you say a little bit, you really do mean a little bit. Look, motherfucker, I hit copy, I hit paste. That shit's exhausting. It's like, and I use an Apple, so it's not even Control-C. That fucking shit's Command-C. Oh, man. That's fucking hard.

I just don't even know how you do it tom it's just i i i deserve like some kind of a medal or i don't know is it like a plaque or like a lucite trophy i'm not sure exactly i'll just fill a condom with lucite and then slap you with it how's that so in this episode a little later on, we're going to have Dale from Foundation Beyond Belief on. So stick around for that. He's actually got some fucking useful things to say. But before we give you that, we'll pepper you with some useless bullshit. Starting with the first story, which comes from MSN.com.

Pakistan mob kills woman and girls. So let's not limit it. Yeah, no. Over blasphemous Facebook post. In Islamabad, which is hardly a backwater of Pakistan, a Pakistani mob killed a woman who was a member of a religious sect and two of her granddaughters. But to be fair, one of her granddaughters, I think, was a baby.

So, and the other one was a seven-year-old. I hear they put up a hell of a fight. Oh, Jesus. I mean, the baby, look, the baby posed an imminent threat of posting to Facebook once she learned how to speak and then write and then blaspheme. So this was really like a preemptive strike against blasphemy. It's like a preemptive drone strike against the kid.

Right. Yeah, no. Right. I think that's good. But, you know, let's be really, really fair. I think they burned to death. Yeah, no, I think you're right, yeah. You know, based on the article, it appears likely, and I don't have all the details,

but it looks like they probably were burnt to death. So, you know, they had that coming. Oh, man. I don't know how else to lead this story, Cecil. You know, how do you kill a seven-year-old and a baby? What's with the fucking, I mean, it's like Facebook. The guy posted on Facebook. If this is what they mean by boost post, then I'm not interested in this.

I don't think that's worth the money. You know what they mean by boost post then i'm not interested in this i don't think i don't think that's worth the money you know what i mean it's almost like one of those google i'm feeling lucky or i'm feeling very unlucky buttons where you're right i'm feeling good and i'm feeling i'm feeling tragically unlucky click oh man what a fucking disaster buckle and you know the thing is is like i i understand that there's got to be more involved in this than just somebody i mean don't you think there's got to be more involved in this than just somebody who's just mad because somebody posted something there's got to be because they started some shit on fire yeah i you know it was 150 people who got fucking super, super butthurt. And who do they get butthurt against, right? They got butthurt against a minority.

So that's really what this comes down to, right? Is the religious majority has a fucking boner for this small minority of people. for this small minority of people. And what they're doing, Cecil, is they're looking for any splinter, any aggravation, any kind of mild annoyance that they have. And then they can whip these fucking idiots up into a goddamn fucking murderous frenzy.

They can get, you know, it's like, it's like if you were like, I'm so fucking mad, I'm going to get 149 of my closest friends to beat your ass this can't happen this is like some this is like some some fucking uh jim crow lynching shit that's really what this is yeah it's exactly it's almost it's like it's like a fucking horror movie it's like that horror movie where all those people it's the crazies yes it is yeah man you fucking nailed that it is like the fucking crazies and and this is specifically the reason why theocracy is a bad

idea right i mean this is the reason why putting power you you know, political power, military power, social power, putting power in the hands of a religious majority, and the religious majorities never understand this, right? Because they'll always say like, hey, in my town, like, let's bring this back home, because it's difficult to analogize something like this because this happened so many thousands of miles away. It can become very difficult to make this seem real. But think about how these sorts of things play out on a much less violent, much smaller scale here in the States. We've heard this same story, right? The story is, hey, everyone in my town, the bulk of the people, the vast majority of the people that live within my town are Baptist, are Christian, are Catholic or whatever. And so we represent the majority opinion when we do X.

So the government, you know, takes a stance, a powerful figure within politics, within the society takes a stance and they move a position forward based on a religious ideology. And this is that same fucking exact idea writ large. This is honestly the inevitable conclusion of that same kind of idea, right? They're saying, hey, we are a religious majority. Most people are not the Ahmadi in Pakistan. So most people agree with us. You have committed a crime or a transgression against our majority. And so 149 of my closest friends are going to band together and loot your shit and set fire to your baby because you have done something egregious to the religious majority. This is the problem when you put religious power in the hands of any group. Religiosity should never have social power, political power, economic power.

It should always be a privately celebrated thing. So this next story comes from Times Live. Filipino beheaded in Libya for not being a Muslim. And the thrust of this story is primarily that a Filipino construction worker was kidnapped and beheaded in Libya because he was not a Muslim. And I don't know even what you say else about this, except for that he was fucking beheaded, Cecil. Yeah. He was stopped at a checkpoint. So it's like a, I don't know, like a police officer or whatever. Like, it's almost like one of those drunk driving traffic stops.

They're like, you know, can I see your Islam card? I'm sorry, sir. I'm sorry, sir. You're going to have to stick your head out the window. I'm sorry. He's probably like asking the officer, officer, is there any way I can let you off? You can let me off with just a warning.

And like, what's a warning head cut off? You know what I mean? Like, that's like, you just got like part of your head cut off. You know, the officer's got a quota to fill? You know what I mean? Like, like that's like, you just got like part of your head cut off. You know, the officer's got a quota to fill. You know what I mean? Like there's a lot going on in this story. And you gotta like,

you gotta promise to be like more Muslim-y in order to get like, just like bits of you cut off. Yeah. It's like, I'm not like, I'm not like full Muslim, but I'm like kind of like a partial Muslim. It just fucking threw the thing from phantasm at him, and it just came across.

You know, the thing is, like, whenever I read about these fucking beheadings, the first thing I do is check the date to make sure it's still 2014. Right, right. Then I cry and die a little bit inside. And then I wonder, like, did you solve the problem? Like, you want to, like, call the guy up who's, like, who got done cutting the

fucking head off of another human being and be like, did you fix it, motherfucker? Yeah. Is it fixed? Did you fix the fucking problem by cutting that fucking dude's head off of his body? Like, it's not enough just to kill somebody, but you cutting that fucking dude's head off of his body like it's not enough just to kill somebody but you gotta fucking cut his goddamn head off like could you be more medieval outside of building a fucking castle with a moat how do you

even like well just the logistics of chopping someone's head off is a lot to do you need a block you gotta have a guy with a fucking mask on. You need a big weapon of some sort, like a greatsword or an axe, or if you're in Iran they have pneumatic ones now. But clearly... That's technology, motherfucker. They got steam power, bitch.

But you've got... It's logistically hard to chop someone. It's not a fucking easy thing to do. It's not like I could just decide on a whim to chop someone's heads off i need fucking tools i need opportunity i need them how do you tie the person down what do you how do you even do all this work it seems like a lot of work couldn't you just shoot him 10 000 years ago remember when daniel pearl got beheaded that yeah yeah that reporter i watched that video uh-huh i, that reporter? I watched that video. I don't know why I watched that video.

I had an idea at the time about why I watched the video. Now I have no idea why I watched it. They cut his head off with a big knife, and they just sawed it off, man. Jesus Christ. And it did not take very long. They had a very sharp knife, and when they got to the fucking spinal cord, you could see, like, moved it, like, once, twice, got in between, shunk, and the head came off.

It took maybe 30 seconds. Yeah, it's just meat. But I was fucking appalled at how quickly they separated head from body. I was like. I fucking cut the backbone of things. You know what I mean? Like, I get it. So I know.

But, yeah, at the same time, you know, fucking cut a chicken back sometime. You mean it's not fucking easy. It's not like it's still a work. It's not like I'm going to be like, and it's done. It's not like I could touch a chicken and it just falls in half. You know what I mean? Like, there's a lot going on in there. Who's that French chef?

Oh, I can do that. Fair enough. That guy would be fucking amazing. Fair enough. Jacques Pepin could do that. Fair enough. That guy would be fucking amazing. Jacques Pepin could do that. He could just be like, I'll touch this chicken. He like fucking, all he has to do is like wave his hand in front of it and it fucking fries itself. He would behead you so adeptly you'd thank him afterwards.

He'd like serve you. That's how awesome that guy is. He'd serve your head like so, I mean it'd just be beautiful. You'd look like a little pigeon or something. He'd like cut little things in you. You're like, yeah, I got beheaded, but I got served with a beautiful wine and shallot reduction. And I don't mind. I don't mind so much. I feel all right about this.

Yeah, we made a really nice aspic to put me on. It was really nice. A thousand years ago, there was a great conjunction. Three suns lined up. Another great conjunction coming up. Anything could happen. The whole world might burn up. The great conjunction is the end of the world.

Or the beginning. So this story comes from Right Wing Watch. You can learn the exact day of Christ's return, but only if you give $5 to World Net Daily. So when you sign up for WorldNetDaily's email list, you commit to a whole bunch of fucking nonsensical emails written by idiots and delivered to goofballs. And they offer you all kinds of deals about like, you know, like fucking like crazy, like prepper shit, because like, I guess when armageddon comes you can like fool jesus with

concrete i've never understood that i i don't know why these people even want to live through that god you know we've talked about this but i have to say it again it's the end of the fucking world what's the upside like you're like you emerge from your fucking concrete bunker and you're like yeah i saved my family so we can all live in the horror of the road what's for dinner today dad oh it's fucking babies again what's for oh we had babies last night family dog tonight for dinner guys we're gonna eat the family talk isn't that great yeah what's? Oh, that's tears of sorrow. Yeah, we're having a big, tall glass of tears of sorrow. Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts, which we are about to receive. Which we are about to murder through thy bounty. Through thy bounty.

Oh, that's awesome. But it's actually, you know, I will say, Cecil, I did not appreciate that right-wing watch. I felt like this was a gross exaggeration. They're not actually charging $5. It's $4.95. $4.95, yeah. Yeah, clearly that nickel matters. $4.95.

You know, you really can't give shit away like this for free because no one will pay attention. What they're doing is a real clever marketing technique, which is taking worthless information and giving it the illusion of worth. You know, they're basically saying, we have a bunch of information. We could give it to you. We could just give it to you, but you'll pay attention if I give it to you for $4.95. Right. Well, and the $4.95 represents a $35 discount off the regular $39.95 price. So that's a fucking deal, man. Not only are you taking worthless information, assigning a value to it, and then giving me a discount on it, but it's not quite $5. Even I have not quite $5. It's true.

That's amazing. Don't all these people want, like, fucking all dogs to go to heaven? Aren't they, like, supposed to be to be like hey fucking everybody's going to heaven come on guys let's make sure everybody gets there we want to make sure that you know because everybody's trying to stop the gays all the fucking like right crazy straight like right people are just like gotta stop the gays from doing this because they're gonna go to hell you gotta stop this from happening because they're gonna go to hell you gotta stop you know there's all this stop doing the things that we don't like because you're going to go to hell.

That's sort of the mantra. And then you have this thing where it's like, well, we're not going to tell you when it is unless you pay us money. Well, wouldn't you want to give this away for free? Wouldn't you want to be like, hey, come to our website and pay attention to when the fucking rapture is because we want to make sure that everybody goes to heaven. attention to when the fucking rapture is because we want to make sure that you everybody goes to hell have it well my favorite part of this though cecil is that not only are they in violation of their own theology as you just pointed out but they tell you the day that that the end of the world is going to happen but not the year so they tell you the day. What fucking good is the day without the year? Like, what?

I mean, seriously, like, if it's like October 11th, what fucking possible meaning does that have in my life if I don't know that that's October 11th, 2015 or October 11th, 40116? You know what I mean? Like, what possible use is that information? 4,0116 You know what I mean? Like what Possible use Is that information You know they do say that like

It's very near So like okay well what's it's very near Actually mean like Near is kind of a fucking Relative term you know like Is it very near Generationally Meaning like it's only three generations from now oh well fuck that's you know for a 2 000 year old theology that's actually

pretty fucking close but or is it like very near tomorrow right right like which very near are we talking about i don't have $5 to throw at this thing. I wouldn't. I kind of want to throw $5. I wouldn't throw $5. I'd rather buy a fucking bum, a fucking mad dog 40-40 or whatever than do this. There's no way

I would throw money at this. I would rather buy a book of matches and four singles and burn them. Yeah. I would rather buy a book of matches and four singles and burn them. Yeah. So we're going to take a short break, give you some information on how to contact the show and how to donate to the show. And we'll be back with Dale McGowan from the Foundation Beyond Belief after this.

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So this story comes from Times Daily. God put coal in Alabama. Incoming regulator says Alabama's utility regulators are supporting coal. No great shock, right? I mean, fucking coal, Alabama, no surprise there. And opposing federal efforts to limit fossil fuel emissions. I'm sorry, I can't speak today. And they're doing this basically in part based on the justification that God put the coal in Alabama, Cecil.

Wouldn't have put it there if he didn't want us to blow the top off a mountain and kill every living thing within 100 miles. Good Lord. I, you know, isn't this, I mean, couldn't you just fucking use this argument for anything? Yeah, man. Couldn't you just use it to basically subjugate whoever you want, utilize whatever natural resource you want, and fucking discriminate whenever you want? It's fucking crazy. resource you want and fucking discriminate whenever you want. It's fucking crazy. Like I read this and I just, I just hang my head and I think, and I think this honestly,

man, this is fucking for real. Why my kids have no fucking future. Like this is why they will live in a world that is fucking shittier than the world I grew up in. It's because of fucking idiots like this who are looking at the world and saying like, yeah, man, we gotta fucking strip mine every fucking forest and every fucking mountain and burn

all the fucking coal because fucking Jesus and God and fucking whatever crazy nonsense you can fucking shit out your mouth hole. And meanwhile, I'm like, I'm looking at like my fucking kids and I'm thinking like, you will never know a world even marginally as beautiful as the world I grew up in because we're fucking ruining it every fucking day of the week. What day is it today? Oh, it's

fucking Wednesday. Probably ruining part of the world today. What's going on Thursday? I don't know. God put some fucking coal in Alabama. Light it all on fire, bitches. Thursday. I don't know. God put some fucking coal in Alabama. Light it all on fire, bitches. Wednesday is coal emission Wednesday. Coal emission Wednesday. It's on my calendar every

week. I try to burn as much coal as I possibly can. Actually, light it while it's in the ground. To let it burn while it's in the ground, right? One of those coal... Set the coal mines on fire in the earth. Yeah, because I mean, it's there the ground, right? One of those. One of those. Just fucking set the coal mines on fire in the earth. Right. Yeah, because, I mean, it's there to burn, right?

Why not? Let's do it. Dude, it's like the fucking long dark of Moriar or whatever. Like there's fucking Balrogs down there. There is. Fucking Obama goes down there and he's like, you shall not pass. He's got a shield on and it's just like the fucking U.S. seal. It's got the fucking eagle on it.

He actually starts saying, he's like, you shall not. And then fucking Boehner pops up and is like, hold on a minute. Kill the buster. Wait a second. The problem, of course, is just like all these other stories. Yeah, he's going to use God, but he's sure, you know, what almost certainly is happening is somebody put a big fucking check in,

not in his pocket, but in his fucking campaign fund. And he's got to fucking make sure that he appeases those people. So they essentially lobby in favor of this stuff. He's like, oh, okay, well, I got to make sure that I appease him. Well, the best way to fucking get

a bunch of fucking goobers off my back about this is to quote God. This is the political equivalent of God made dirt and dirt down my heart. Do you remember hearing that when you were a kid? It's like, and then like all of a sudden, like you're not fucking a kid and, you know, functionally retarded anymore. And you're like, God made tetanus and tetanus does makes lockjaw. It hurts.

It actually hurts a lot. That hurts real bad. Allah. Akbar. Akbar. Allah. Akbar. Allahu. Akbar.

Just little Allah. Thank you, Chicago. So this story comes from the Telegraph. Commonwealth Games Scotty dogs are disrespectful to Muslims. Man, I just, I don't even know, man. Use of Scottish Terrier dogs during the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony is shameful and offensive, says Malaysian political officials. Or fucking whatever, man. Like, fucking dogs.

Like, we're fucking worried about Scotty dogs. Like, the fucking Malaysians are like, we've got all the other problems licked. Yeah. Has anyone got a dog we don't like looking at? Anyone know where that plane is? Right? You've lost two airplanes recently. Two.

Fucking worried about dogs. Fucking cute little fucking, the dogs are fucking, in the fucking Commonwealth Games, like, there's fucking, like, cute little fucking Scotty dogs walking around in fucking tartan coats. Like, doing everything but playing the motherfucking bagpipes.

Right? They're like fucking funny dogs. Like, oh, it's dogs in people clothes. Ha ha ha ha. Like, they're fucking walking around and people, oh, it's dogs in people clothes. Like you're fucking walking around and people are like, we are very offended by this. Are you kidding me? There is nothing cuter than a fucking Scotty dog in a tartan outfit. I'm not, I'm not even kidding. Like I will fucking punch someone that's so fucking cute. That's fucking adorable. I want to choke someone out. It's so fucking adorable.

It's one of those things where you see it and it's like so fucking cute I feel a little violent about it. They're like little beards. You just want to grab the little beard on the goddamn thing. It's fucking, and you know if they animated it, it would have a Scottish accent. You know, reading from this article, it says many Muslims refuse to have direct contact with dogs

which are considered by some to be unclean in Islamic culture. Some overseas Muslim groups have reportedly previously called for Let me say that again. A jihad on dogs. You see, they have a hard time with the dogs. They think that they're unclean, but they have no problem with fucking severed heads, evidently. They don't have any issue with that. That's not unclean. That's fine. It's fine.

It's fine. I'm only covered in human gore. But I'd hate it if there was fucking old yeller around. Where you chop the head off and just like fucking stream of blood shoots straight up in the air. It's like a fucking water balloon that's all red and it just explodes at everybody. It's like, no, that's fine.

That's fine. Get the fucking Scotty dog movie. You're putting on a movie to like help your kids fall asleep. And it's like, you've got like two DVDs. One is the beheading of Daniel Pearl and one is like fucking Marley and me. And you're like, oh, fuck Marley and me. That's disgusting. Fuck that. No, put that away. That, Marley and me, that's disgusting. Fuck that.

No, put that away. That's horrible. You know, it's funny, too, because it's like every culture across all of time has had, like every human culture across all of fucking time has had dogs. Like as either companion animals or working animals or fucking whatever. And all of a sudden it's like, yeah, we don't like dogs. And you're like, really? It's not like cockroaches.

It's not cockroach. It's not like they fucking let the Muslims on the, on the, on the, and then they had a fucking team of marching cockroaches in front of them. They didn't do that. It's dogs. I got to say, there's two dogs. I live in a condo in downtown Chicago and they have two Scotty dogs that live in this building.

But the Scotty dogs are like fucking bred with a dachshund. So they're like Scotty dogs, but they're like long Scotty dogs. Fuck you. And they're like all short and shit. They're fucking awesome. When they turn, like their whole body is like fucking like a rubber band. They're the best, man. They're the fucking coolest looking dogs I've ever seen.

They got little beards. They're fun. And they wear coats in the winter. Oh, yeah. I love it. I fucking love it. Hey there, how's it going? I saw your sign.

Okay. And I'm here for my stoning. I'm a lesbian. You guys are going to stone me? So this story comes from the Raw story. Harlem pastor. God curses homo supporters with cancer,iv and syphilis and then hell at least he throws hell loving god it's a loving god he sounds like a great dude man

what a sweetheart that god is really this guy's head is perfectly round too i just wanted to point that out it's like you could fucking put a compass on his nose and spin that fucker and it'd be perfectly ratched around his face. Well, it's actually advantageous that way since he was not gifted with a neck of any kind. So you got to have that perfectly round ball. You know what it's like, Cecil? It's like a fucking owl. You know how long an owl? He turned his fucking head 362, which is crazy.

Like an owl's head is just like, yeah, I fucking rotate like a satellite dish on this fucking thing. What's up? He has like a four minute little thing. Let's play parts of it, Tom, and talk about it. So here's. That sounds great. This guy who's talking about how he wants to. He just basically hates all the things.

And this is from, you know, this is a video from ATLA Worldwide. It was broadcast on July 24th, 2014. Our children are special. They always have been. They always will be. But right now, our children are under a massive attack by the homosexual lobby, especially within the public school systems. And I'm here today to plead with you to take your children out of these systems and give them an opportunity

of natural sexual maturity. Within the school systems, they are being influenced at a time at which their minds are very tender and they really know not exactly what to choose except to go along with peer pressure what the fuck oh my god can you imagine how tough that peer pressure would be it's like gosh smoke a cigarette i don't really want to say a fucking smoke a cigarette i don't know if i want to say a fucking smoke a cigarette and then suck a dick wait a minute. No one's ever done that. Man.

And you know, like how many kids get their ass kicked every fucking year because they're homosexual in high school? Like how many kids, the other students find out they're gay or assume they're gay, even if they're not and just beat the fuck out of them? Because they're effeminate or whatever. Yeah. If they're effeminate, whatever. They just, they just think, oh, well that kid's gay. Oh, well I, and just beat the fuck out of them. Yeah, if they're effeminate, whatever. They just think, oh, well, that kid's gay. Oh, well, I'm going to beat the shit out of them. And they beat the

fuck out of them. And that happens all the time. Where's the peer pressure? Wouldn't that turn that gay kid into a straight kid? I mean, that's peer pressure if I've ever seen it. It's so funny how they reverse the narrative of actuality to make it seem like, first of all, they make it seem like anybody is actually choosing their sexuality.

Like, like it's a fucking Scantron sheet. And you're like, hmm, am I going to be sexually attracted to which gender? I don't know. It's like a smorgasbord. You walk up there with tongs and there's like a big pile of penises and a big pile of pussies, and you're just like, I don't know, what do I want tonight? Do I want the salty or do I want the sweet, you know? I don't know.

I could kind of go either way. I don't have any natural proclivity. Let me stick one of these cocks in these pussies and eat it like that. See how that fucking works out for me. one of these cocks and these pussies and eat it like that. See how that fucking works out for me. It's like you go to the eye doctor, except for instead of like putting the thing in front

of your eye and then like flipping it back and forth. It's like better or worse. It's like you hold out your fucking left hand and your right hand. It's like you got like a fucking boob in one hand and a dick in the other. It's like better or worse. Better or worse. And you're like, I have such a hard time.

Literally. A hard time. I can't decide which I'm attracted to. They should not be pressured into making a decision to become homosexual. Now, we'd like to provide an opportunity for you here in the New York City area to bring your children to the Otlaw Elementary and High School right here at 123rd Street and Lenox Avenue in the middle of New York City. I am the founder of the school that's 20 years old. Our principal, Adam Jacob LaFleur, has a master's in mathematical sciences and has been with this ministry in school for more than 15 years himself. We also have a free breakfast program for the community and for the school.

And we have perhaps the best curriculum you'll find anywhere at any time. Wait, the best curriculum at any time ever? Any time. It's the best curriculum in the world ever. Fuck you. I don't know about that. No, stop. Fuck you.

Best curriculum ever. That's true. We train our students to focus on getting a Ph.D. degree before they have completed their educational process. But going back to the issues at hand, as a parent, guardian, and loved one, you ought to give your child the opportunity to mature naturally in their sexual understanding, but they will not get that in the public school system. There will be so much pressure, or there is at present pressure on children to choose to glorify homosexuality. God disapproves of it.

What is going on there? God disapproves of it. Well, there's a lot of chances for glory holes, too, not just glorifying. Yeah. glory holes too, not just glorifying. Yeah. Don't let anyone tell you that homosexuality is not wrong and that Jesus never said anything about it. Both Jesus and Peter clearly addressed the issue. Jesus said what Moses promoted in the book of Leviticus as an abomination of homosexuality is the law and he will never change it. also stated on the issue of stoning he stated that he that is without sin can cast the first stone and of course you know anyone that is

righteous can indeed cast the first stone now i'm not here wait wait wait wait fucking hold the phone now i'm not a fucking biblical scholar, but isn't that turning that whole fucking parable a bit on its motherfucking head? No, I think he's got it right. I think what he's saying is, I am completely without sin, and so are the righteous. And I guess the righteous are people

who follow him. Holy shit, I cannot... That is seriously, like, that is legitimately, since we start, we're 168 episodes into this show, that's the most fucking self-sanctimonious bullshit I have heard yet. Where you're actually saying like, you know what? You know what God was actually, you know what Jesus was actually saying? It's like, hey, if you're righteous, it's cool if you fucking throw rocks at another human being. That's really the story that's being told there.

Yeah, I know. Really? That's exactly how I feel, too. It's just like, it's almost like he's saying, when God said don't murder, he didn't mean me. Right. Like, yeah. No, no, no, no, no.

Hold on a minute. That's for you fucking unclean Scotty dog lovers. All right? That's not for me. I got a fucking school full of people with phds i can fucking throw rocks you know what i do i fucking i throw i stone seriously like six nine-year-old girls every morning with my coffee because i love jesus well he does no now he does say that he doesn't approve of stoning in the very next sentence how can he say that hold on no let's listen to the whole thing again it's when he's talking about stone he stated that he that

is without sin can cast the first stone and of course you know anyone that is righteous can indeed cast the first stone now i'm not here promoting stoning i'm simply countering the homosexual mafias homosexual mafiaosexual mafia? What is the homosexual mafia? What exactly are they? Like, what's the bootlegger item that they're running? Like, butt plugs across the border? Like, what exactly are they?

It's just fucking dental dams and condoms. That's like all it is. It's just like big boxes of condoms. They're shipping them in. It's like all it is. It's like big boxes of condoms. They're shipping them in. And everybody's like, hey man, those are legal. You get a handful of those at Planned Parenthood for free.

No, no, we want to make sure the homosexual mafia, if they walk into your place, they're like, hey, it's a great place you have here. Be ashamed if somebody fucked with your throw pillows by replacing them with these.

It'd be a shame if someone redecorated in here. Statements that are inaccurate and that flat out lies against Jesus. Paul also talks about it in Romans chapter 1 and Peter talks about it in Romans chapter one, and Peter talks about it in second Peter chapter two, uh, throughout the entire first 10 verses of that chapter. So Jesus did address it.

It's wrong, my friend, it's just wrong. And it's wrong for our children to think that they have to make such a horrid choice, uh, for the balance of their lives. I'm asking you to bring your children to our school right here. And yes, this is a promotion for our school. It's good. He's like, yeah, no, no. I mean, it's clearly a commercial for my school. I mean, come on. But I really want to make sure that your kids somehow don't choose being gay.

Yeah, it's a commercial for the school. And I'm not going to gain monetarily, except for that I'm going to gain monetarily from it. But anyway, your kids will be gay if they don't go to my school. So you should totally send them here unless you want gay kids that will burn in a lake of fire for all of eternity. But I'm just saying, if you love your kids, we'll give them free breakfast, and the public schools will give them dicks in the butt. Just saying.

I mean, it's your choice, parents. They're going to join the homosexual mafia. They come home. You'd be like, honey, what do you do for a living? I told you not to ask that, ma. All you do is look at your like your fucking kid like looks at you and just slowly shuts the door in your face. Don't ask me about my homosexual business.

Oh, that's awesome. So we're here speaking with Dale McGowan from the Foundation Beyond Belief. And Dale, if people don't know about you or the foundation, could you let them know who you are and what the foundation does? Sure. I'm executive director of the foundation foundation and it is a humanist charitable foundation. It's a membership foundation that supports charities around the world. And the way it works, people sign up for an automatic monthly donation in the amount of their choice.

And then we feature five charities per quarter and people are able to distribute their funds however they'd like among those five charities. So sometimes we'll have members who are really interested in human rights. They might put 100% of their donations toward human rights each time. Or somebody might split it 50-50 between poverty and education. We just allow the members to distribute however they'd like. At the end of each quarter, we send 100% of the money that was collected to the charities that were featured.

And at the moment we're giving grants totaling about $60,000 per quarter. Since the foundation launched a little over four years ago, we've raised over $1.6 million for these charities. Oh my God. That's amazing. Have you been the executive director the entire time? I have, yeah. Why were you chosen as the director? I founded the organization. That gives you a leg up. That's the best way to do it. That's right.

You just start your own. You play by your own rules. That's awesome. I was at the Humanism at Work conference here in Chicago for the first day, and one of the people said something very interesting. They said, you know, they really love these large donations. They love to get lots of money. But one of the things that they were very, very happy to get, and one of the things that they were stressing that people who don't donate should give is these monthly donations because it helps these people budget. Is that something that you are interested in doing as well, lower amounts but monthly? Yeah, that was actually the intention of the foundation from the beginning.

The idea, one thing that has to be made clear is the foundation isn't about demonstrating that humanists and atheists are good people. That's a fine byproduct, but that's not at all what we're about. What we're actually trying to do is create a giving culture in the humanist community. And people are already plenty generous as individuals. People support causes that they care about. But to create a habit of giving, that's a different thing. That's a different level of engagement. That's what we wanted to do. And one of my favorite things to get is, you know, I'll get a message from somebody who a couple of months ago, I got a message from somebody who's a member and he just graduated from college. He doesn't have a lot of money. He's in his first job and he signed up for a

membership at $10 a month to give to these charities. And at the end of the year, he sent for his tax receipt and he said, oh my gosh, I gave $120 this year to charities. And he said, there's absolutely no way he would have done that if he hadn't been part of this organization. He might've given $5 here, $10 there when something passed his view. But by committing to this sort of monthly engagement, he was able to say, hey, as a humanist, I'm engaged in making the world a better place. I'm doing it on a regular basis. And I gave much more this year than I would have if I was just on my own. Yeah. You know, it reminds me of, you know, locally there, the public radio station is WBEZ, the local 91.5. And a couple of years back, they came out with what they call their high-fidelity program, right,

where instead of having the quarterly drive or the biannual drive or whatever they did, you could basically sign up, and it just hits your credit card every month. And it was very clear from the get-go that that's a better system. Like that's just a system that's going to generate a better and more consistent stream of revenue. So that makes a lot of sense. And those models seem to have a lot to inform one another. I'm curious, how do you choose the charities that you're going to be engaging and supporting? Well, we are constantly searching for charities.

And we have a nomination form on our website. So any charity, any group or individual that wants to nominate somebody, thinks they'd be a good beneficiary, can fill out that form. But we're also constantly scouring the nonprofit world to find charities that we think will really interest our members, that'll get people really engaged. And we're always looking for charities, relatively small, our preferences for budgets under $10 million a year, which sounds huge, but in the charity world, that's actually, these are the really small to moderate size charities that we're going after. Because the American Red Cross, they do great work,

but they're not going to really notice our input. But if you have a charity with, let's say, $3 or $4 million a year, and you drop a $12,000 grant on them, they actually notice. That's something that's going to really be a significant contribution to their annual work. So we're looking for charities in that range. We're looking for evidence-based charities who give good feedback on the effectiveness of their approaches. We're looking for charities that are good at telling their own stories. Charities that are out there, they're going to give us information that's going to allow us to tell their story to our members so that they can be engaged and enthusiastic about supporting as well. And then we want to see innovative approaches, some charities that are helping to sort of create the model for the next wave of approaching whatever problem they're dealing with.

There's a perfect example of that was there's an organization in Chicago called Cure Violence, which is actually run out of the University of Illinois, Chicago. And it's an absolutely fascinating model they've got. They treat violence like an epidemic disease and they actually apply disease models to the spread of violence and disease prevention epidemiology concepts to controlling violence, looking for vectors, looking for causes, isolating causes, and so on. And they've had this tremendous effectiveness in certain Chicago neighborhoods where they've actually caused the violence rate to plummet when they start to apply this disease model. That's the sort of thing that catches our attention. It caught the members' attention and we ended up giving them a good

level of support. I think they were a beneficiary about a year ago. So it's just, we have a database of, gosh, now I think we're up to like almost 500 charities that have been deeply vetted by our vetting staff. And then we choose each quarter, we choose a slate that we think is going to be a good combination and a good group of unique charities to interest the members. So when you donate to a charity, do you ask that they report back any information as far as metrics are concerned? Or do you do all the vetting up front, donate, and then just kind of watch and see what happens with your money? In other words, do you ask specifically like, Hey, I'm, I'm giving you $12,000 and here's what I like that 12,000 earmark toward? Uh, yes, we, sometimes we earmark it. Um, uh, sometimes

we don't, we just say, this is, you know, this is for, you're doing great work. Uh, um, this is, we want to support that work, but we always ask for a report for how the money was spent, um, you know, and some sort of indication that it had an effective impact. Uh, that's not something we used to do when we started out, uh, at the beginning of 2010, uh, our grants were fairly small. We only had a few members. We were giving grants in the neighborhood of about a thousand dollars to $1,200, uh, which, you know, for a nonprofit, they're grateful to receive that. But we asked less of them at that point. Now we're giving grants 10 times that size, $12,000 grants. And at that point, we can really sort of have the muscle to say, yeah, we really want to have a report on

this. We really want to be able to take something to our members that shows that their contribution really made a difference. So some people have extra cash clearly, but some don't, some don't have the extra cash, but they want to do charitable work. Do you help, uh, help place anyone in any kind of charitable situation where they can do some sort of labor? Uh, yeah, actually one of the things that our members expressed an interest in that, um, pretty early on in going beyond the giving program and starting to create sort of a more direct hands-on volunteering situation. So we created Volunteers Beyond Belief, which eventually grew into the Beyond Belief Network. We now have 95 humanist volunteer teams around the United States in, gosh, I think now we're in over 30 states. And these are teams that are volunteering in their

local communities, volunteering in food banks and homeless shelters and doing blood drives and trash pickup and the whole range of volunteer work. So what you can do is go to our website. We've actually got it divided into humanist giving and, uh, volunteering. And you click on volunteering and you can get information about, uh, uh, a volunteer team that might be in your community. So basically what we're trying to do is get existing humanist and atheist groups to make volunteering a bigger part of what they do. And that's been working really well through that program.

So there's like a, there's, uh, many different types of organizations have like a year of service. Now I, when I was at the humanism at work conference, I had, I had, uh, a chance to see that some people were doing that, uh, with a humanist twist. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Uh, yeah, actually we, um, there's been an evolution around that. Uh, you know, you've got the national day of prayer, um, every year. And, uh, initially there was a, uh, a movement in free thought to have a national day of action. Uh, the idea is, you know, we want to go beyond just, uh, uh, mumbling some words. Uh, we want to actually make a difference happen with our hands, with our actions in the world. This has actually expanded to a week of action that we typically do in the week right around the time of the National Day

of Prayer. And this year, we served as sort of a focal point. We worked with Adam Shalom, who is a secular humanist rabbi there in Chicago, and also with the help of Harvard Humanists and put together the Week of Action and encouraged groups around the country to specifically focus on service and volunteering in their communities during that week. And we were able to get a lot of sort of great collective work done during that time. Now, hang on a minute. Are you suggesting that doing stuff is actually better than just hoping really hard toward the sky? Well, the research is out. The jury is still out on this, but it's kind of the hunch we've got.

You know, it's interesting. I work on occasion with some Catholic charities, and one of the Catholic charities that I work with is a very interesting model. They get students that just graduated from college and they ask them to dedicate a year in a place. So the one in particular that I'm thinking of is in Denver, Colorado. And the students come there,

they support them for a full year and they let those students go and work in the communities. They actually get them jobs and let them work in the communities as full-time volunteers for an entire year and then they spend that year reflecting as well as working full-time for these charities. Is there, now, there was a group of people that kind of went off and did a whole travel around the world sort of a bit of service for the humanists, didn't they? Yeah, they did. This is a new program of ours.

We sponsored something called Pathfinders Project in this past year. And this was a year to lay the groundwork for a permanent humanist service corps, an international humanist service corps. So for one year, this team of humanists, three humanists traveled around the world. There was initially a fourth humanist in the team as well. She had to come home a little bit early. But the three humanists finished out the year, went to a total of eight countries, 10 different volunteer sites, and volunteered in a whole range of activities, education.

They worked in a school for underprivileged kids in Cambodia. They worked on water sustainability projects in South America. They worked on water sustainability projects in South America. They worked on a human rights work in Africa, primarily in northern Ghana. They did an education project in Uganda. They worked with Leo Igwe in Ghana in the witchcraft accusation camps. These are camps where women who are kicked out of their communities because they're accused of witchcraft, come to these camps. And Leo is working with them and advocating for the victims of these accusations. And the Pathfinders worked with them as well. So the purpose of this year was to do the research and lay the groundwork for a permanent core. Now, Conor Robinson, who was the leader of that trip,

is now the director of this program. For the next year, he's gonna be planning the Humanist Service Corps, and starting next summer, we're going to be sending a team to Ghana for one year in a single place. This is the idea of the new corps, similar to the Peace Corps. It's like a Peace Corps for humanists.

And so you can watch our website for announcements. We're going to be accepting applications in the fall. I believe it's October that the application period is going to open up. But this is a really exciting new program. The hope is to have permanent humanist service teams working globally starting next year. We've sort of alluded to it and we've mentioned it a few times, the Humanism at Work conference. What was that all about and what was your plan going in and how do you think it went overall? Oh, it was just a joy. It was really a fantastic thing. The idea of Humanism at Work was to have, well, one of the things was to have an atheist conference that didn't primarily talk about God. Most of the free thought conferences I go to, you know, it's fun and I love it and it's terrific.

And there's a lot of, you know, poking religion in the eye and all that kind of stuff. It's really great. But there's a point when I'd like to actually talk about something other than religion and other than bouncing ourselves off this other worldview. So the idea was to have a conference that's talking entirely about what we are doing, what our positive contribution is as humanists and how we can build a better humanist contribution to philanthropy, to volunteerism, how we can build a better humanist contribution to philanthropy, to volunteerism, how we can increase our engagement as individuals. I wanted to focus entirely on the stories of people, these amazing people who are out in the world now

putting their humanism to work, people like Leo Igwe and like Hemley Gonzalez, who runs a charity in Calcutta that is currently building a school and working on poverty in the slums of Calcutta and doing it right, not doing it in this way that the sisters of, what is the missionaries of charity,

Mother Teresa's organization. There's been a lot of revelations recently about the fact that the practices of this, this charity, the practices of this charity are really, uh, terrifying when you look into, um, you know, the, the way they actually, uh, work in these, um, in these conditions and whether it's a religious organization or not, doesn't matter. It's an organization that's not, um, addressing the causes in a way that's going to be sustainable and build capacity in these communities. So Hemley is there. He's devoting his life to serving the poor of Calcutta and lifting them out of that poverty, primarily through education. That's really an absolutely

fantastic example. Sarah Blaine, who lived homeless on the streets of, which lived without shelter on the streets of Phoenix for a month last year to draw attention to a shelter that's closing. Carmen Zepp, who has started feeding the homeless in Raleigh, North Carolina every Saturday. These are humanists who are out there putting humanism to work. And we wanted to bring them to Chicago. We wanted to have them tell their stories.

And then we wanted to have speakers talking about evidence-based giving and how individuals can get more involved in their own communities. So we just wanted that focus to be a really different kind of conference. And it was amazing. I knew it was going to be good on paper. You could see, wow, that's great. Look at these great speakers. Look at this great plan. But when you actually get them there and you start to get the cumulative effect of these stories and of this approach and the positive energy in the crowd, it was stunning. I just was really blown away by what it was like there.

It strikes me that it's amazing what you can do when you don't look at poverty as a virtue. what it was like there. You know, it strikes me that it's amazing what you can do when you don't look at poverty as a virtue. You know, when you look at poverty as what it is, which is not something to be sort of enshrined as a virtuous act, like, oh man, you know, we got to have some poverty now and again, when you look at it as a fucking problem to solve. You know, one of the things that you had mentioned was that, you know, you weren't doing this to show that humanists are charitable, to show that humanists are, you know, capable of giving too. But I can't help but think, man, the word needs to get out. Like people need to know, like everybody needs to know, not so we can pat ourselves on the back and say, you know, great job, but so that more humanists can come out of

the woodwork and contact your organization and volunteer their time and volunteer their money and give to the organization what they have to offer. Because Cecil and I have been moved doing this show many times by the unbelievable generosity when we've done, you know, some charitable fundraising. So what kinds of things do you do to get the message out, to get, to draw attention to what it is that you're focusing on? Do you focus on the charities? Do you focus on the foundation? What are your methods to sort of alert the media and alert the public and get the word out? Well, there are lots of prongs to it. Social media is a big way we do this. We've got over 11,000 people in our Facebook group and we're constantly telling not just our own story,

not just what's going on in the foundation, but whatever our five feature charities are for that given quarter, we're constantly mining their own messaging to bring that work to our members. The idea is to keep people engaged in what's going on in the world. It's really easy to be detached from that. But we're getting better and better, I think, at storytelling in an effective way. You know, an example is it's most effective to tell the story about one person.

You don't want to go in and say, you know, we helped 600 girls in Kenya get an education. What you want to do is focus on this one girl. Focus on Beatrice, the story of Beatrice, who got an education through CAMFED because we supported CAMFED and this is an example of what our work is doing. You want to tell the story of the student who is now in college in Guatemala on a full four-year ride on the Foundation Beyond Belief scholarship. This is an indigenous Guatemalan student who showed a lot of promise in high school, but was not going to be able to go to college until we stepped forward and created this college scholarship, full four-year ride through Roots and Wings International. So it's by bringing all of those stories to people and saying,

join us in this, you know, be a part of this, give $5 a month, give 10, whatever you, you know, what we really recommend people do is to give what you won't notice. Start there. Don't say, okay, I'm going to give something that hurts right away because, you know, maybe you won't do that. But sign up for something that you won't notice coming out of your account. For a lot of people that might be $5 a month. And then six months in, all of a sudden you realize, hey, you know, I haven't even noticed that coming out. I'm going to bump it up. So you click on the button on our website that allows you to go up a level and you go up to $10 a month or 15 or 20, whatever you want to do. So the technique is through social media storytelling, through videos. We have quarterly videos that go out

through press releases, through interviews. We try to constantly keep this story in front of the general public and also in front of the freethought community so we can see not only that this is going on, but how gratifying it is to be a part of this, to contribute to this kind of thing and to be engaged in a positive way and building a better world. Do I get like if I do $50 a month, do I get like a free tote bag or? You know what's interesting about that? We actually tried that, not a tote bag, but we tried some incentives like that and the members slapped it down. No kidding, that's awesome.

It was really interesting. Like two years ago or something, we had some, you know, hey, if you donate during this month, you know, you're going to be in a drawing or something. And we got emails from people who said, stop that. Good for that. It's interesting. I've actually looked at some of the research on this since then and realized that, you know, it's one thing if it's a public radio station,

that's a different thing. But if you are a charitable organization, people want to give and feel the satisfaction of being a generous person. That's actually a, that feels good. If instead I juxtapose this thing, I insert this gift in there. Hey, give because people really need our help and you might win this prize. You know, that really ruins it for people.

So we have actually backed entirely off those kinds of incentives. We just do it by telling our members how grateful we are for their support and by letting them see the impact of their donations. How did you get your start in philanthropy? Well, I really have to go back to my first work in the Freethought community, which was in non-religious parenting. I was looking for a need in the Freeth thought community and I'm a parent myself. And I went looking for books, looking for resources on non-religious parenting, and there was just nothing out there at all.

So I ended up creating Parenting Beyond Belief and Raising Freethinkers, which were the first two comprehensive resources for non-religious parents. And that was great. Those are successful. They're selling very well. I do seminars and talks and that sort of thing on non-religious parenting. And then I was ready to look for the next need. What's something else that the Freethought community needs? And I recognize that this systematic giving culture is something that we really needed to have. This is an advantage that religious people have. And we can just put it right out there. When they point out that church goers give more of their discretionary income than non-church goers, lots of studies show that this is actually the case. I'd actually be shocked if it wasn't true because these people, 52 times

a year, walk into a church and have a gold plate passed in front of them full of the donations of their friends and neighbors. And then they're asked to donate or not, you know, and they're in this inspirational setting. They've heard about the need in the world and they plop a 20 in the plate. That is an incentive. And it's also a systematic giving opportunity. I wanted to create the same kind of thing for the freethought community. And I started thinking, well, how could we do this? We're not gathering once a week in a room, at least not all of us. How can we do this? And so we gradually built this model of rotating charities, of an automatic donation and of us bringing the story to the members. So it was

really just a matter of trying to fill a need and hoping that people would show up, that they would come when we opened up the opportunity and they did. And then the support has just been terrific. Have you ever been turned down when you try to help a charity? Have you ever said like, Hey, we're foundation beyond belief. And they said, yeah, pass. Yes, we have. Yeah. About five times. I think it's, I think we're up to five times now. But. Yes, we have. Really? Yeah. Tell me about that. About five times. I think we're up to five times now. But I mean, I have to preface that by saying 115 times we have not been turned down. So it's much less common than you might think. When we are turned down, and I don't give the names of the charities or anything like that because it turns into a thing.

names the charities or anything like that, because, um, you know, it turns into, I'm sorry, you can edit that out. Um, because I, well, the reason I don't actually is, um, I want us to be about the positive thing. And if we, if we were to say, Hey, these idiots, you know, wouldn't accept our, our, one of the stories got out at one time. Um, but, um, if we said that, that becomes what it's all about. And then the narrative becomes, Oh, look at the atheist whining again. You know, I don't want that to be the narrative. I want the narrative to be the positive stuff we're doing. I want to talk about the people who are willing to work with us. So, but what happened, it's interesting, the ones who turn it down almost always turn it down for the same reason. They are worried about other people's reactions. It's not even

their own dogma. It's not even their own bigotry. They're concerned about alienating other donors. And I think they always overestimate this. I really think it's something that, and this is something that charities do all the time. There was a story in the news a couple of years ago. there was a story in the news a couple of years ago. I don't even remember the charity now, but Rod Blagojevich's wife, Patty. So you're in Illinois, right? Yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah. Patty Blagojevich wanted to give $50,000 to a muscular dystrophy charity or something like that. And they turned her down. And the reason was that they felt that associating with her, and this is right in the middle of the whole mess, um, was going to, uh, you know, cast a bad light on the charity.

So it's actually a calculation that charities make all the time. Uh, we're hoping that by being a positive, uh, force in philanthropy and being this engaged in a positive way, that's going to start to go away. That over time, this kind of engagement is going to make people see us as, you know, philanthropists, just see us as no different from anybody else, and to not worry about what some third party is going to think. So yes, it happens once in a while. It's the great minority of times. And I just try to breeze right past it. Is paying my mortgage considered a charity? If so, I will not.

You know what you can do? Fill out the form on our website and see what happens. Tom will fill it out for everything because he's the cheapest man I've ever met. So he will fill it out for his cup of Starbucks in the morning. Just mark the form. Yeah. So one of the things that you did mention, and I did want to touch on this, you had said that religious people do give more money and there are studies that show.

Now, one of the things that I think is interesting is when you give money to a church, if you're sitting in the church, you're paying for a lot of what that church is doing, which is housing the people that put on all the things that the church does. There's a lot of overhead costs. What kind of overhead costs does the foundation have? Well, we have less than a church, first of all. But we have 10 part-time staffers. We have website costs. We have transaction costs and that sort of thing. But those don't come out of the charity donations. That's one of the key things in our model.

A hundred percent. When you give a dollar, that dollar goes to the charity that you designate. No kidding. Now members have the option of saying they can opt to designate a certain percentage for the foundation as well if they wish. And some members do and some members don't. It's perfectly fine. Most of our operations are actually paid for by outside grants and donations. If people give us a one-time donation, like in our year-end drive, or if we get a grant

from an outside agency or something, that's what's running our operations. We decided early on that people can go directly to these charities and support them if they want. So if we're inserting ourselves as a middleman, if we're trying to bring the humanist community together, we didn't want to devalue the donations by taking a percentage off the top. So right away we said, we are going to fund ourselves through separate donation streams

and all of the donations to the charities go to the charities. That's a terrible way to get rich. Yeah, it's not working at all. I'm just saying, Mike. You'll never, I mean, I may not be the world's best businessman, but you are never going to get rich. Never going to get rich.

This is definitively not Scrooge McDuck approved. That's all I'm saying. So what are the charities that you're working with now? You said there's five charities that you guys work with. What are the charities that you're working with now? You said there's five charities that you guys work with. What are the charities that you're working with right now? Yeah, this is, we always have five categories. So there's always an education charity, always human rights, always poverty and health,

one charity for the natural world. And then there's a charity called Challenge the Gap is one of our categories. Challenge the Gap is actually always a religious charity. This is an interesting option. We choose one progressive religious charity that does not proselytize and does good work for the common good. And that's something that our members expressed an interest in early on. And some people just enthusiastically support it. Some people don't want to, and they put their money off to the side. But one charity for each category in poverty and health right now,

we're supporting an organization called Soil. They work in Haiti, and there are two problems in Haiti, two endemic problems. One is human waste disposal, because it frequently gets into the water supply and causes diseases. And the other one is they have infertile soil. So this organization has actually figured out a way to convert human waste into soil, into arable soil components. And they are sort of helping to solve both of these problems at once. That's one of those innovative approaches that we always look for. In the natural world category, it's Rainforest

Foundation US, which is a rainforest conservation organization. In education, Washington Women's Employment is an organization working with women in the Washington, D.C. area, women who are in the lower socioeconomic level and in need of employment training in order to enter the workforce. People who have been in conservative Orthodox Jewish communities, especially in New York, and are looking to leave those communities and enter the mainstream world. And this is a traumatic transition because frequently these people, they have no experience with technology. They have no knowledge of the outside world. In some cases, they don't speak English because they have only spoken Hebrew or Yiddish in the home. And this is an organization that helps people transition out of these cloistered communities into the larger world.

And then in Challenge the Gap, it's actually another outstanding Chicago organization called the Knight Ministry. This is an interfaith organization, several different churches in the Chicago area who work with the homeless and they have like a bus, it's kind of an RV that goes around and brings supplies, personal supplies, and brings supplies, personal supplies, and helps also provide some programs to help homeless people transition out of homelessness. Really an outstanding program.

And one of the nice things is in Challenge the Gap, if we feature an interfaith organization, they're almost guaranteed to not be proselytizing because as soon as you have a Jewish organization, a Christian organization, Islamic organizations, these various things working together, then they're not actually even able to effectively proselytize a single view

and they will just get down to the business of doing good work. And that's, we look to be sure that that's what's going on, that there's no proselytizing and that there's an effective that that's what's going on, that there's no proselytizing and that there's an effective program that's actually going on and the Knight Ministry is doing that. So that's our slate for this quarter.

Now, if people were gonna find Foundation Beyond Belief or wanna donate, how would they go about doing that? You go to foundationbeyondbelief.org and you click on contribute and that'll take you to the page or join today. We've got several links all over the homepage that can set you up and you can either set up a monthly donation through PayPal or credit card or Google wallet. We've got several ways to do that. You can also just click in and get more information about the organization, foundationbeyondbelief.org.

Thank you so much for your work. It is amazing the things that you're doing. And just know that a small part of the humanist community, at least us two, we really stand behind you and we think you're doing amazing stuff. Oh, I appreciate that very much. Thanks for that. All right. So we want to thank all of our patrons. Thank you so much for donating money, and we want to thank especially the newest patrons, Joseph, Alexander, Scott, West, Sasho, Glenn, Erica, Pecca, Aaron, and Max. Thank you all so much for becoming brand-new patrons. We appreciate the donations,

and your money goes a long way to making sure the show is possible. So thank you very much. Yeah, thank you very much. I do plan to embezzle the money and make sure that Cecil does not have an opportunity to make use of any of it.

Embezzling. Tom, that's the most fancy thing you've ever done if you embezzle it. My embezzlement would just be like, Cecil, Cecil, what's the bank account number it's funny because the bank account's in your name anyway you have to ask me what the number is we got a message from helen tom and helen says um she sent a message basically talking about uh she really liked uh our idea of uh what we talked about with Islam on 165,

and we talked a little bit about sort of putting ourselves in their shoes. And she also says, and I think that this is very funny, she says, on a completely different note, has anyone in the atheist community examined the fact that the male G-spot is in the bunghole as evidence against A, intelligent design, or B, homosexuality being unnatural? I think that's great. It's one or the other. Which one is it?

That's great. I don't know. Maybe Jesus just liked a finger in his ass. Who knows? Yeah, pick your poison. Pick your poison. Pick your prostate is more like it. That's a great point.

Thank you, Helen. That's funny. We got a message from mike too and mike uh mike has a interesting thing that he had sent along he sent along a big long piece about um uh about hot sauce and uh and how i guess it's a it's a punishment for children which is just fucking horrifying um but yeah man and vinegaring your kids, too. Vinegaring? What, do you give them a miracle fruit beforehand?

Like, what's going on there? But the best part about this, I think, is the last bit when he's like, how could you guys forget the dinosaur with the best vocabulary is the thesaurus? I thought that was great. That was very funny. That still makes me laugh. It's a dad joke. It's so good. It's so good. Oh thought that was great. That was very funny. Thank you, Mike. It still makes me laugh. It's a dad joke. It's so good.

It's so good. Oh, I love fucking. That's one of those jokes at the end of like, here's a fucking bunch of dead kids who suffered horribly. Also, dinosaur joke. It's a thesaurus. I love it. Oh, it's great.

We want to thank Dale McGowan from Foundation Beyond Belief for joining us. He's just doing amazing work. And Foundation Beyond Belief, it's one of those, you know, if you that they're giving out are reaching people and reaching humanist charities that are helping people out and that are really well vetted. I think that's one of the problems that many people have with giving money is that it's just so hard to decide what you're going to give your money to and how is this how how good is this charity what is this charity doing you know how much of my money is going to go to helping these people is it proven is it one of those things that uh that is proven is this charity going to go you know am i going to give money to this charity and they're going to go overseas and give bibles away you know like there's so many things that you're worried about as a humanist when you give money to charities and And this takes out a lot of that guesswork. They're doing great work. So you can find their stuff at foundationbeyondbelief.org. And Dale, we're hoping

that he'll come back on in the future. We're going to read his book and we're going to talk about parenting in a humanist way, humanist parenting. So that should be very interesting. We're hoping that he'll come back on in the next couple of months months yeah i sure as hell hope so i bought his fucking book so that wraps it up for this week uh we'll catch you next monday but until next time we're going to leave you as always with the skeptics creed credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno-Babylon bullshit. Couched in scientician, double bubble, toil and trouble, pseudo-quasi-alternative,

acupunctuating, pressurized, stereogram, pyramidal, free energy, healing, water, downward spiral, brain dead pan, sales pitch, late night info docutainment. Leo Pisces, cancer cures, detox, reflex, foot massage,

death in towers, tarot cards, psychic healing, crystal balls, Bigfoot, Yeti, aliens, churches, mosques and synagogues, temples, dragons, giant worms, Atlantis, dolphins, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards, vaccine nuts, shaman

healers, evangelists, conspiracy, doublespeak, stigmata, nonsense. Expose your sides. Thrust your hands. Bloody. Evidential. Conclusive. Doubt even this. The opinions and views expressed in this show are that of the hosts only. Our poorly formed and expressed notions do not represent those of our wives, employers, friends, families, or of the local dairy council. Thank you. you